>> Steve Jobs bows out of Steve note, a new PlayStation portable is said to be in the works, and New Yorkers may have to pay extra for iTunes music. It's Wednesday, December 17, I'm Natali Del Conte and it's time to get Loaded.
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>> Apple made a surprising announcement on Tuesday saying that Steve Jobs would not deliver the keynote at Macworld in January. Instead, Apple's vice president of marketing Phil Shiller will give the address that we like to call "Steve note". Shiller is the goofy guy we always see demonstrating iChat with Jobs during keynotes -- talking about some big shoes to fill. I wish him luck, I really do. Furthermore, this will be Apple's last year at Macworld. Of course Apple doesn't own Macworld, it's an IDG conference, but Macworld without Apple, it seemed so sad somehow. The conference will go on, but consumers will cease to care about it. It will just be an unsexy developer's event. The big looming question is why is Jobs not delivering Apple's last keynote at Macworld? Now, I have gone out of my way not to speculate or report on Steve Jobs health because I don't think it's within the scope of this broadcast or any of our business for that matter. For that reason I am not gonna postulate that his rumored poor health is the reason, I'm just gonna say that I really hope it isn't. Palm launched the mobile application store for its line of Treos and Centros. It's called the Software Store -- talk about unsexy. It's essentially their version of Apple's App store open to third party applications. Palm is sharing the revenue with the application developers fifty-fifty whereas Apple and Google share seventy-thirty and RIM shares eighty-twenty. Palm software is a joint effort with PocketGear. The company beings over 50,000 applications to the table, although the actual store only launched with 1500. Now, before we go on pooh-pooh this new initiative because it's late and not very exiting, we should hold out a few weeks for CES. Palm has invited press to a big announcement at a big event in January in Las Vegas. I expect a major makeover from them, so let's get them the benefit of the doubt, shall we? They've had a rough year. Our parent company CBS just re-launched our video player on TV.com. It's a much cleaner TV watching experience with a wider player, the ability to chat with fellow watchers and lots of HD content. Tech Crunch is calling it a Hulu knock off -- okay yes, it does look a lot like Hulu, but we love Hulu. And isn't imitation the best form of flattery? The PSP is getting yet another revamp. This time around it's called the PSP 4000. It will be the last of many updates before Sony launches an entirely new handheld platform dubbed the PSP2 -- how creative. Rumors are that the next handheld console will most likely not be out until 2010, but Crunch Gear says that the PSP2 games are already in the works right now and speculation around the design is that it may resemble an iPod Touch type design. My advice to Sony, get an accelerometer in that thing -- pronto or else don't even bother. The U.K. is cracking down on bitTorrent users. According to The Register ISP Virgin Media will monitor, target and restrict bitTorrent traffic in the U.K. Apparently, they didn't learn their lesson from what happened to Comcast here in the U.S. Virgin Media's move is to prevent bandwidth hugs from heavy usage, while some in favor of Net neutrality say all Internet traffic should be treated equally. Comcast was banned and fined by the FCC for doing this. Virgin Media's CEO says that this move will come into force in the U.K. sometime in the middle of next year. Laptop Magazine got their hands on one of many Netbooks that will be seen at CES. This model is from Intel and it's called the Convertible Classmate PC. It will have the tablet's style formfactor with the touch screen and accelerometer to display in both portrait and landscape. The Netbooks are gear towards children, hence the title Classmate PC, but so far sources say the touch screen and the accelerometer is quite impressive. It will have the standard 1.6 gigahertz Intel Atom processor, 60-gigs of hard drive and run Windows XP. A venture company in Japan is selling special green-friendly plastic. The material called Agri-wood utilizes perished rice and powdered wood, both of which are disposable material. The product is made from would be garbage, contains no CO2 emissions and is manufactured at a reasonable cost. The plastic is used to make bags, kitchen ware and school lunch tray. New Yorkers may have to pay extra for digital entertainment, such as music on iTunes, ebooks for the Kindle and more. Since the state is in such dire financial strains, Governor David Patterson is proposing an iPod tax as part of its state budget. It's specifically aimed to tax anything deem to be a digitally delivered entertainment service. I would assume this would extend to Paid-for-adult content as well. Either way it's another reason living in New York is just no easy way to go. Those are all your headlines for today. Before I sign off I wanna do a rare Wednesday birthday shout out to my mother. Her birthday was actually yesterday, but I was home sick with the flu. Happy birthday mama -- love you. As for the rest of you, I will see you tomorrow which incidentally will be our last news show of the year. We have a great line up of shows for you during the Christmas break, but we won't actually be filming the daily new show. Tune in tomorrow and I'll give you more details. Thank you for watching. I'm Natali Del Conte with CNET TV and you've just been Loaded.
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